


Good Guess

by almina



Category: Ripper Street
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-20
Updated: 2018-04-20
Packaged: 2019-04-25 11:33:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14377782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/almina/pseuds/almina
Summary: Edmund Reid needs help and seeks out Homer Jackson





	Good Guess

Homer Jackson opened the door of his surgery. He thought he recognized that knock and yes it was Reid standing there, looking unwell, tired and dispiriited.

"I take it this is not a social call to see how I am doing after you fired me. You are not asking me to return to your copshop. Let's see, you look sick. You are guarding your left side."

Jackson did a dead on mimickry of Reid standing rigid his left arm up unconsciously protecting his left side from surprise impact.

"Hmm, I will further say whatever doc you saw for that, he has not fixed the problem so you came to me. Out of desperation."

Jackson marked the changes of expression on Reid's too pale face as he spoke and saw that he was right on all counts. As he gestured for Reid to come inside he had the distinct impression that Reid expected to be turned away. Jackson thought never, never, not you, Reid. You are an infuriating son of a bitch, but I could not hang you out to dry.

"So where does it hurt?"

Reid touched his left side

"Undress to the waist," Jackson said and wondered whether he should have said 'disrobe'. Was that what the Brits said to their patients? What did it matter? At least, he hadn't said, get naked, peel, or drop'em to Reid as he had to countless soldiers. He took Reid's coat and hung it on the coat tree beside the door. Shirt off. Jackson hung it up. On Reid's left side, waist level was a reddened six inch welt. It was very hot to Jackson's touch. He grasped Reid's arm and drew him close to the window to put the the sunlight on it. At the lateral end, almost on Reid's back was a thumbnail sized raised scar. 

"Have you ever been in military combat?"

"No."

"In a gunfight?"

"No."

"Close enough to an explosion to feel it?"

"Not that close."

Jackson bit back what he was about to say. 'lived a dull life haven't you?' Reid was suffering. He'd needle him another day. Jackson was studying the welt when understanding bloomed. 

"Have you ever had a coat or jacket tattered on the back and you couldn't remember how it was damaged?"

Reid looked startled. This was why he valued Jackson - these leaps of perception.

"How did you know?"

"Good guess. Tell me about it."

"Emily noticed it. She said it was unwearable and showed me. It looked moth eaten far too badly to be mended and given away. We discarded it."

"When was this?

"Three years ago."

"Was it around the time of the explosion?" 

"At least months afterward."

"On the table. Lie on your right side. Reid noted the artful placement of the operating table by the north facing window. Artists' light. Even late in the day, it hurt Reid's eyes.

"What do you see? " Reid said. 

Pain flared every time he changed position. 

"I think you've got some shrapnel in there. It probably took a bit of cloth in with it, hence the sepsis. I have to locate it before it travels further. Those moth holes were made by hot particles from the explosion, burning minute holes that opened further until you blamed innocent moths for the damage. One, maybe more than one piece penetrated the skin. So sharp, so fast it didn't hurt enough to make you tend to it." 

Jackson's fingers outlined the welt. Reid felt faint vibratory pressure as Jackson explored it. At the medial end of it, the part that turned red only last week Jackson pressed a little harder. Reid gasped it hurt so.

"Lie on your back, then hold still. That thing moves every time you do."

Reid was careful as he changed position. Jackson left the surgery for a moment and returned with a scalpel on a small tray.

"I sterilize instruments by pressure cooking them so as not to transfer infection from patient to patient. But first..."

He laid a towel over Reid's lower half, covering the trousers. "I'm going to use hydrogen peroxide, a good antiseptic, an even better bleach. It will ruin your clothes if it gets on them."

The scapel, sterile and gleaming, looked wicked in the sunlight. Jackson realized Reid had seen him use a scalpel only on the dead, opening great swathes of skin, slicing muscle. No wonder his eyes went wide.

"Don't worry.I'm going to find it before I cut."

Then Jackson did something that astonished Reid. He pulled a fine chain from his pocket. At its end hung a polished pointed stone.that gently swung between Jackson's fingers.

"The frogs uh, the French, call this radiesthesie. I learned it in New Orleans. The pendulum swings most vigorously over what's causing the problem." 

Jackson moved his hand over the lesion. The pendulum swung a little over the sorest end of the welt and swung violently once past it.. 

"It's on the move," Jackson said. Sometimes people carry shrapnel all their lives without noticing it. More often the body pushes it out. Sometimes it moves around someone's insides until it damages a major organ and causes death."

Jackson used his pen to dab two spots just past the welt on Reid's abdomen. Again he surprised Reid. He washed his hands before he took up the scalpel. 

He stroked the skin with the tip of the blade. The instument was so sharp Reid barely felt it. Jackson pressed the skin on each side of the incision. 

"Ah ha " He picked out the shard of metal and held it up for Reid to see. "Lot of soldiers make earrings of these for their sweethearts. Reid reached for the thing that had given him such trouble. Jackson was moving the pendulum over the welt again.

"Don't know that that's the only thing that shouldn't be under the skin." Jackson used the pendulum again It swung, slowed almost to immobility, then swung a little harder.

"Indecisive," Jackson said. "We're not finished yet." 

He sliced the other end of the welt. 

"I'm going to irrigate all that matter out." 

He went to the kitchen and returned bringing a syringe fresh out of the sterilizing pot. It did not have a needle but rather a rounded rubber nozzle.Jackson drew up hydrogen peroxide and injected it into the opened lateral side of the lesion. It seared It stung. It was all Reid could do to keep from pushing Jackson's hand away. Blood, pus, and fizzing liquid issued from the medial incision. It disgusted Reid though the stuff was from his own body. Jackson stared at it, entranced. Reid wondered at Jackson; how he could be so interested, so without disgust for such effluvia? Lord, the things he'd seen the surgeon stare at with that same rapt expression, decomposing tissue, globs of mucus, shit, clotted blood. Jackson dabbed tweezers into the curdled mess and plucked out a dark speck. He held it up to the fading sunlight. 

"Was that a blue jacket you had to throw out?" 

Reid nodded. He relaxed, except for a faint sting he felt no more discomfort.

"That thing you did," Reid held up his hand as if a pendulum dangled from his fingertips, "Once you'd have gone to the stake for that."

"And you'd have lit the fire under me," Jackson said.

"No. No. No. I want you to come back. What I said was stupid, cruel, wrong. I can't unsay it. But I am sorry."

"I never thought I'd hear those words from your mouth. Tell you something Reid, there's supposed to be no pleasure like the cessation of pain, what you're feeling now. I can think of one other, but gratitude is blinding you to my rough edges. Wait until you heal, get used to normalcy, before you invite me back. I haven't changed at all.. Everything you don't like is still here."

That gave Reid pause. Jackson went back to his kitchen and brought out dressings. 

"Rags, washed, boiled, oven dried." And adhesive tape.

Jackson had both wounds dressed and taped in minutes. "If for some reason you have to take these off, pull it off quickly."

Jackson made a motion of tearing the tape away from skin. 

Come back in three days and I'll change those dressings."

Reid nodded. His eyelids drooped. He looked only moments from sleep. Being sick or in pain wears on a person. 

"In my experience, that table is perfectly satisfactory for passing out drunk, but it does not allow for restorative sleep." Jackson pointed at the bed just the other side of the glass wall. "Sleep there. I may need the table for another patient, even at this late hour."

Reid took up the offer. He meant to take only half an hour's down time as if he were napping at the office, but he fell deeply asleep minutes after he kicked off his shoes. God it felt so good, sleep without the sporadic jabs, sleep without the sense of looming ill health.

He woke to see Jackson, bespectacled, concentrating at his desk like a monk in the morning light. Jackson heard Reid stir and turned in his chair. He was grinning, close to laughing..

"Just had to see the look on your face as you woke up thinking Where am I? Whose bed am I in? What did I do last night? Not to worry Reid, you did nothing you cannot own. Want some coffee?"

Jackson stood up and went to putter in the kitchen. Reid was dressed by the time Jackson set coffee on the kitchen table 

"A physician owes his patient an explanation of what was wrong, if that is possible. You had shrapnel embedded between the subcutaneous fat and muscle. Like most people with such injuries, your body encapsulated it. Then that containment broke down. If you believe in the germ theory of disease and I do, you will see that the germs were no longer contained and set up infection in the body they lived in so long without doing harm. You'd have carried the infection around for days or weeks, then failed with massive sepsis, kidneys shut down, unsurvivable fever. I probably irrigated all the crud out of the lesion, and killed the remaining germs but if a fever returns, if that mark swells or goes purulent again, come back here, and I will clear it out. Sooner is better than later."

"About the cloth... Before the War of the Rebellion, southerners were always dueling, demanding satisfaction for some slight or another. For instance" Jackson spoke in a deep South accent " You said my dog is dumb Call your second. I'll meet you at sunrise.' These men were not entirely stupid. They took off their shirts before they shot at each other. Before that practice took hold, fragments of cloth killed as many men as bullets."

Reid looked much better this morning,his attention, no longer fixed on pain and on his failing health, reached outward for every detail. Jackson felt it was heady even seductive to have such attention on him.

"So what do I pay you for saving my life, for making me feel so much better?" 

It was hard for Reid to ask that. Like many Brits of his generation he thought it ill bred to talk about money. For Americans money was a sport, a blood sport, but a sport.

"Think of me as a country doctor. I'll take what people can pay or are willing to give. Chickens, lambs, bales of hay.. Today I want..."

Jackson went to Reid's side of the table put his hands on Reid's shoulders, leaned down and kissed him. Even as he did that Jackson thought to himself, no you fool, too much, too fast, you don't even have the excuse of being drunk, making a pass at someone who won't take it too seriously This was the moment for Reid to say no, to roar no, you fag. I wondered if there was any vice you had left untried.' 

Jackson braced himself to hear it. Reid said nothing. He nodded, stood up, went to the door and put on his coat as if this were an ordinary leavetaking. Jackson followed, expecting to be reviled but determined to take it. Just as he left, Reid turned and laid his hand on Jackson's face. He leaned close, not at all repulsed. 

"Thank you, my friend, my good dear friend."


End file.
